I don’t mean to tarnish the importance of every member that has ever played with The Grateful Dead since its inception in 1965. But, the holy trinity, the triangular nexus, the plutonium-powered nuclear reactor that drove the flux capacitor of the band, had always been the core three: bassist Phil Lesh, lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, and rhythm guitarist Bob Weir. With the loss of the mustachioed Weir on Saturday, January 10th, the last booted foot of the transcendent, and transformational, aggregate is gone. The drummers remain.
Robert Hall Weir was still in high school (his third) when he serendipitously met Garcia, who was unaware that it was New Years Eve, in 1963. Which means Bob Weir has been onstage, in front of all of us, for the last sixty-two/three years of his life.
As Wallace Shawn says in The Princess Bride, it’s “inconceivable” to imagine being Bob Weir. Through Walter Cronkite to TikTok influencers, Weir grew up in an exponentially pervasive public eye. Even Truman Burbank, of The Truman Show only spent his first thirty years having every aspect of his life scrutinized and magnified for everyone to comment on. Weir spent 63 years navigating it all. He was the Lost Sailor.
Another difference is that Truman Burbank wasn’t on a diet of Monterey Purple and Orange Sunshine. But, Weir certainly was. Watch the endless reels of a young Weir, thoroughly engaging in very postmodern interviews, all while performing 3-5 hour shows, in a high octane spaceship, disguised as a rock and roll band. With saucer eyes full of 300 micrograms of legal pure Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-25,
Now, in your imagination of being Bob Weir, compound that acidic diet, while also living most of your life with an undiagnosed neurodivergence. Dyslexia’s specific effects and side effects were only just becoming a nascent, but burgeoning, field of study. One “effect”, for Weir was being summarily compelled to self expulsion from a number of schools. And somehow, Weir’s partnership, and friendship, with Garcia, cultivated and blossomed a rich, colorful environment that was built out of acceptance. A place where Weir could be himself.
While the world watched, Weir made it to the other side of internal barriers, encountering multi-dimensional warped realities, and dramatic widespread social upheavals. The curse of celebrity was unavoidable, and yet, Weir stayed grounded through family, friends and dogs. He matured from “the kid” to “the man in the pink shirt” all while onstage, and gratefully stayed authentic and humble off stage.
In late 1995, just months after his best friend, Jerry Garcia’s passing, Weir was processing his grief by throwing himself into new projects. Specifically, his work with the Furthur Foundation. The giving-arm entity of The Grateful Dead, which sits alongside the Rex Foundation.
The Furthur Foundation’s lofty goals, which Weir believed wholeheartedly, were aimed at feeding the hungry, educating children, and raising the red flag about the deterioration of the Amazon basin.
Musically adrift, Weir found his mooring with Rob Wasserman and Jay Lane, in Ratdog. Numerous collaborations abounded with The Nationals, God Street Wine, and The Mother Hips, to name a few, but it was The Wolf Brothers that felt new in later years. Weir just wanted to be onstage. Bob Weir was one of America’s greatest entertainers.
Weir’s 2016 solo album, Blue Mountain, was the 69-year-old finally easing into his third act. It was time for the spry, quick with a joke, scaffold-climbing, eternally young Bobby to really lean into becoming the old sage Cowboy. Cowboy Weir, looking like he just stepped out of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western—that Weir? He liked to take it slow, and if you were patient enough to listen, he had mesmerizing stories and songs that could ease your mind, and make you laugh.
In an interview just a few years ago, Weir was ruminating on what lay ahead, and he seemed at peace with the idea of being free of this mortal coil. Ever the prankster turned wise elder, Weir said, “Death is where the adventure starts.”
Weir died with his boots on. He played and sang his songs until he just physically couldn’t do it anymore. Bob Weir should be thought of in the same category as Johnny Appleseed, Willie Nelson and Paul Bunyon. An American, a humanitarian, and a deep creative who always pushed the message of kindness.
